Just Harry
by pinkconchshell
Summary: Besides, it’s not like we’ll never see them again, you know. I’m sure every single one of them – especially Fred – is up there having a laugh at the cleaning up we living people have to do.


Just Harry

I really wanted to write a reunion scene for Harry and Ginny, since those two are so totally and completely made for each other. I do not own anything, except my little sister, she's my slave. (But she doesn't know, so don't tell her.)

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She looked furious.

Her fiery hair was hanging loose and tangled down her back, a deep cut penetrated her white freckled shoulder, and her small, dainty hands were placed on her hips, her wand clutched in the right one. She was glaring at him with such ferocity that Ron and Hermione shrank back from Harry's sides and took a few steps back. There was a long, awkward silence in which she and Harry merely stared at each other, her glowering and he feeling like her gaze was a rope tying him to a lit stick of dynamite. Then Ron broke the silence.

"Well," he said, his tone having a slight hint of finality. "I really need to find the little wizard's room, haven't gone since the whole Gringott's-dragon-break-in escapade, and I reckon it's time for some relief. I could use some help, Hermione."

"What?" said Hermione, aghast.

"Finding it!" He said quickly, his entire face turning red. "Just – come on!"

He grabbed her hand, and they took off down the hallway and around the corner, leaping over debris and running top speed away from Harry and Ginny, who were now, ironically, alone.

"Hi." Said Harry, quite terrified at the murderous look on her usually beautiful face.

"Hi?!?! Eight months you're gone, hunting down Voldemort, battling Death Eaters, breaking into banks, breaking into the _Ministry, _surviving torture, riding dragons, running from Snatchers, destroying Godric's Hollow, hiding in Grimauld Place, and then you come back and call me here only so I can hide in that wretched room, and then you bring Voldemort himself here, and I see you running around and battling, and then you hand yourself over to _him _and then you _die, _only to come back and defeat the most evil wizard of all time, and then you three walk right on past me going who-knows-where, and all you can say is HI?!? Harry James Potter, you've got a lot of nerve!"

Her face was red, her voice was booming, and sparks were spurting out of the end of her wand, yet to Harry, she'd never looked lovelier. He'd missed her too much to care. So much in fact, that his terror had vanished the moment she'd opened her mouth to yell.

Unthinking, he rushed at her, and in the next second, his arms were tight around her waist, his face pressed into her soft neck, and he hugged her so tightly, in fact, that he lifted her up off her feet, and for a fleeting second he caught that all-too-familiar scent of flowers that went wherever she did. Harry started covering her face with kisses - something he never thought he would have done. He kissed her nose, her cheeks, her eyes, eyelids, chin, lips, ear, freckles, eyebrow, forehead, lips again, temple…

"Get off me." She muttered, giving him a (surprisingly) forceful shove. "You still have a lot of explaining to do before I forgive you, Potter. I am sick and tired of being left in the dark about everything all the time, I'm not some stupid little schoolgirl-"

"I know." Said Harry. Ginny blinked. "And you're right. You're not some naïve little girl, you never were. You're brilliant and strong and independent, and you have every right to know where we've been and what we've been up to. Here," he said, sliding down the cold stone wall and motioning for her to join him on the floor. "Sit down and I'll tell you everything.

Ginny looked very surprised.

"Oh," she said, sitting down next to him. "I – well, okay then. I didn't think it'd be this easy."

He told her everything. Every single detail of the entire ordeal he could remember was passed along to her. He explained about the horcruxes, the Hallows, the twin cores of his and Voldemort's wands, his mother's sacrifice, and how Voldemort took it into himself for protection, the prophecy from the Ministry, her diary from her first year, the sorcerer's stone, the memories from Dumbledore's Pensieve, Snape's past and his involvement with Lily and the Dark Lord, the visions he would experience in Voldemort's mind, and how he, Harry, was the seventh and final horcrux. He told her all he could think of, and they sat there for hours, with her asking the occasional question.

"And then I walked right past you, I think you heard me because you turned around. Then, on the grounds, I ran into Neville and I told him to kill the snake, Nagini. When I finally got to the forest, it hit me that this was the close, you know, so I pulled out the ring, rolled it over three times, and then my parents and Remus and Sirius were there, and they looked kind of like your diary Riddle."

She looked at him beseechingly.

"They came with me into the clearing where he was hiding. Hagrid was there, he saw me, and I never saw him look so heartbroken. Voldemort sort of smiled and the last thing I thought of before, you know, I died, was-" He stopped abruptly and glanced at her, hoping to God that she wouldn't guess what he had been about to say.

"What?" she asked, and when she shook his head she smacked him lightly and said, "Come on, Harry, you promised you'd tell me everything that happened! I'm not a little girl anymore, remember?"

"No."

She scowled, then suddenly her face lit up and she grabbed his arm. Harry just had time to note the familiar swooping sensation in his stomach when she gave a very un Ginny-ish giggle. He could practically hear the gears turning in her head as she worked out what he'd almost said.

"It's me, isn't it?" She smiled, (How he'd missed that smile!) and Harry felt himself go red. "You thought of me, didn't you? Oh, Harry, that's so romantic!"

"You're too smart for your own good," Harry muttered as she jumped up and started to dance around the corridor.

"You love me, you love me, Harry Potter loves me!" she sang, grinning down at him the entire time. He'd only once seen her this happy, and that was when Hermione had been practicing her Cheering Charms on her.

Harry knew his face matched a fire truck, and he briefly wondered why it was so hot all of a sudden, but the truth of those words, and how incredibly joyful it made him feel when she said them, well, she just might be right. He smiled, really smiled, for the first time in what felt like forever.

"Don't you want to hear the rest of my story, Ginny?" He called out to her as she pranced around, throwing her hair of fire back.

"What's the point, I know how it ends; a person you loved comes and has a little chat about life with you, and then you choose to come back, and then you come out faking death, and then you pop out of nowhere and kill the most messed up wizard in the entire world!"

Astounded, and completely nonplussed, Harry stared at her. She stopped dancing and stood in front of him, looking serious.

"Five years ago, with the diary, I was dead when you found me. Well, mostly dead any way. For me, it was the garden at the Burrow, where I'd met my best friend Joan before she died. It was she who came to get me. She said if I hopped the fence like we used to, then we'd be there. I told her I didn't want to, I wasn't ready, and she pushed me into the pond and I woke up." Ginny gazed off into the distance for a moment, then looked back at Harry. "Who was it for you?"

"Dumbledore," he said, getting up and walking over to her. He took her hand in his. "He explained everything to me, and then asked where we were. I said it looked like King's Cross, and he thought that was hilarious, but if I was ready then a train would come for me."

She stared at him, then slowly slid her arms around his middle, and buried her head into his chest, her long mane of flaming hair tickling him.

"Ginny?"

"Aren't you glad it's finally over?" she murmured, looking up and taking his face into her soft, warm hands. "No more fighting, no more dying, no more losing, no more running, our lives are _ours_ now, we can do whatever we want with them! It seems like it's lasted forever, doesn't it Harry? But we're done now, it's all behind us, and we'll never have to go through anything like that ever again if we don't want to. We can rest now, finally, we can breathe, there's nothing else to worry about."

She released him and raised her face to the ceiling, (which had a giant hole in it) closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. "So this is what it's like to be free." She murmured softly. With a sigh, she sat back on the cold stone floor, then lay back, just watching the sky above, which was a majestic blue color.

Harry looked at her for a moment, then shrugged, and laid back on the floor next to her as well.

_She's right,_ he thought. She was safe, they had won, and now they were together again, closer than they had been for a long time. He didn't feel old anymore, he never did when he was with her. But somehow…

"You're still not happy, are you?" She asked softly. Her previous anger with him seemed to have vanished, but there was a touch of exasperation in her voice.

"It's just – all those people," said Harry, avoiding her gaze. "Remus and Tonks, Hedwig, Cedric, Colin, Dobby, Moody, Sirius, Dumbledore, Fred…" He trailed off, seeing that her face had darkened at the mention of her brother. "It hurts to think – they never – we'll never – I mean-" He started blinking furiously, for hot tears had risen to his eyes and his throat felt constricted and his chest felt heavy.

Ginny rose up onto one elbow, and leaned over to look Harry in the eyes. Her flaming curtain of red hair swung over her shoulder, and her soulful brown eyes were intense.

"Harry," she said, and he could tell that she was dead serious. "Once you love somebody, they never really leave you. Dumbledore always said that love is stronger than anything – even death. Besides, it's not like we'll never see them again, you know. I'm sure every single one of them – especially Fred – is up there having a laugh at the cleaning up we living people have to do. They're waiting for us, Joan told me so. And, I know it hurts right now, because they're not physically here with us to share in the victory, but that's the beauty of being human. We heal. Don't worry, Harry, because everything will turn out right in the end. It's the way of life."

Harry looked at her. Ginny had always known what to say to him, but this…her words had a magic all their own, and he felt his heart lift considerably as he saw her gentle smile and felt her hand in his. He met her eyes and noticed that they had grown brighter, yet deeper, and he seemed to fall into them again as he had all that time ago on those sunlit days on the Hogwarts grounds.

"You're as mad as Dumbledore was," he teased, and she shoved him. He retaliated by tickling her, and he listened to her laughter fill the hall.

"You're right, though," he told her, as they got up from the floor and joined hands. "About everything. I know it's going to hurt for a while, it always does, I'm just glad I have you here with me to stop all the internal bleeding."

She snorted. "Nice. You could have said it in a more romantic way, you know.'

"Who do you think I am, Edward Cullen?"

She chuckled, but then looked thoughtful. "No. You're Harry now. Just Harry."

Harry was whisked back six years ago to his eleventh birthday, the day that this had all started. He remembered protesting to Hagrid that there was nothing special about him at all, and Hagrid contradicting him cheerfully, telling him about his extraordinary powers. How nice it was to know that now, finally, after seventeen years of trouble, those words were finally true. He smiled down at Ginny, who seemed to have noticed the effect these words had had on him. She beamed back.

"So what now?" she asked as they reached the large oak doors of the Great Hall. Harry knew she wasn't just talking about the present moment.

"I think," he said slowly, pondering on his next words. "We finish our thing here at Hogwarts, because you still have one more year left and I never finished my magical education."

"Maybe we can do it together," Ginny suggested, sounding shy.

"That'd be nice," said Harry, grinning down at her. "But what about after?"

"Well, I was thinking about following a career in Quidditch," said Ginny. "Last year Slughorn introduced me to Gwenog Jones, Captain of the Holyhead Harpies, and she came to one of my games while you were off hunting VOLDEMORT, and said that there was definitely a spot for me on the team after I finished school."

"Well you are kind of an amazing Chaser," remarked Harry, and she grinned.

"I heard you wanted to be an Auror," said Ginny tentatively, "But, geez, do you think there'll be any need for them now that Voldemort's gone?"

"I think so," said Harry, frowning. "There will always be evil wizards out there, you know. Maybe in the future some nutter will try and blow up the planet or something."

Ginny rolled her eyes.

"I missed you, you know," she said quietly. Harry, who had been about to push open the great oak doors stopped short.

"I'd think about you every day. Sometimes I'd be furious with you for not taking me with you, sometimes I'd worry about you when I heard you'd been sighted, but most of the time I would just sit at my window wherever I was and just think of you." She gazed into his face steadily as she said this, and Harry felt that if Voldemort himself walked right on past them he would not be able to look away.

"I did, too," he said hevily. "There were times when I'd just sit on my bed and pull out the Maurauder's map and stare at your dot for hours. Not one day didn't go by when I didn't wonder what you were doing, what you were thinking. Ron even caught me muttering your name in my sleep a couple of times. Threatened to castrate me if it was inappropriate, too." He smiled, remembering how those dreams had kept him happy for days on end.

Ginny smiled mischievously. "You really do love me, don't you, Harry Potter?"

He looked into her bright brown eyes and felt the answer somewhere deep inside jump into his mouth.

"You know what Ginny Weasley? I really do."

"Good." She replied, looking as though somebody had told her that they'd fixed her toilet. Then, quite without warning, she jumped on him and started hugging him fiercely.

"You don't know how long I've been waiting to hear you say that." She whispered in his ear.

"What, you're not going to say it back?" Harry asked, slightly abashed.

"Who do you think I am, Edward Cullen?" She quoted him, grinning.

"Well I was hoping you were still my girlfriend…"

She responded by kissing him full on the mouth. He kissed back, quite forgetting where or who he was. His whole mind was filled with Ginny for what seemed like several golden millennia. When they broke apart, his head was still spinning, and he met her eyes with what he was sure was a dazed expression.

"Does that answer your question?" she asked, tapping his nose.

"Not yet," he responded, kissing her again and wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her closer.

"Alright, alright, I admit it," she said a few minutes later. "I feel the same." His heart spluttered, and began to zoom around his chest. He grinned broadly. " But don't you ever chuck me again, Harry Potter, do you understand?"

"Not for the world," he answered truthfully. "Now let's go see what the future has in store for us shall we?" He intertwined his fingers with hers and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"Bring it." She said, and together they pushed open the doors to the Great Hall and strode into a bright light and thunderous applause.

Twenty – six and a half feet away, hidden behind a tapestry of dancing unicorns, Hermione let out an "Aaaaaaawwwwwww," and Ron rolled his eyes, the tips of his ears flaming, as they watched Harry and Ginny disappear into the Great Hall together.

"Look at them," Hermione said affectionately. "Ron, unless I'm very much mistaken, you will be getting Harry as a brother – in – law one day!"

"If he shags her anytime before that…" Ron said, stepping out from behind the tapestry.

"I'm sure you'll have a much easier time doing him in than Voldemort ever did." Said Hermione soothingly. "But for now, let them be. They deserve it. Besides," she added shyly, talking Ron's hand and making his face burn scarlet. "We have some similar details to discuss."

"Oh, right, yeah," Ron mumbled, giving her hand a squeeze. "Well, you know that kiss in the Room of Requirement?"

"Yes…" Hermione turned pink as well.

"Well, I – I've been meaning to do that for a long time. Hermione, I - "

He was cut off by her warm, slender finger on his lips.

"Me too," she said softly, blushing crimsom. Together they leaned in for one more kiss, Hermione standing on tiptoe to try and reach him, and Ron stooping down low to get to her level. They didn't break apart for severel breathless minutes.

"Bloody hell." Ron said, straighteneing up. Hermione smiled radiantly at him.

"So do you wanna go out now?" He asked feeling that it was the right thing to say at the moment. "I kind of love you."

"Now you tell me," muttered Hermione, but she looked into his light blue eyes that reminded her of the sea, and said; "Sure, why not."

"Cool," Ron grinned, looking like as he did the time he had one a Quidditch match, times ten. "Now let's go harass Harry in front of everyone else, it'll make him all embarrassed…"

And they hurried off, unaware that Colin Creevy, Cedric Diggory, Alastor Moody, Hedwig, Dobby, Severus Snape, Lily and James Potter, Remus and Tonks Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Fred Weasley, and everyone else who was tied to them by the immortal bonds of love watched them, laughing, from above.

*Fin*

Too cheesy? Let me know. I have a habit of going in – depth about things that no one really cares about. ^^ You are a brilliant, incredibly lovely, terrific, spectacular, beautiful human, and you know what will make you absolutely perfect? Reviewing! : )


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